Frequently Asked Questions

The ID Guards website uses the most advanced encryption technology available — 128-bit encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) — to help keep your personal information protected from unauthorized access and visitors to this site.

The ID Guards Privacy Policy can be read here.

There is also a link at the bottom of every page that allows you to access the ID Guards Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and other helpful pages.

When you click on the "Login" Link, if you've forgotten your password you will see a link near the top of the page that reads "Request new password". Follow the instructions provided and answer your security question to reset your password.

If you no longer have access to the email address you used to register and/or if you do not remember the answer to your security question, you can call us at 1-866-592-4213 for additional assistance to getting your account reset.

You must be logged in to change your password or security question and answer. If you're having trouble logging in, please read about how you can retrieve your password or contact us for assistance.

Should you ever need to change your password and/or your security question and answer, you can do so by clicking on the link that reads "My Account" on the left side of the site or by clicking on your name at the top right corner of the site. Once you're on your profile, click on the "Edit" Link and enter in the new password and security question and answer combination. Be sure to save any changes by clicking on the button at the bottom of the page.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a federal agency that enforces a variety of federal antitrust and consumer protection laws, including the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

When the FTC was created in 1914, its purpose was to prevent unfair methods of competition in commerce as part of the battle to “bust the trusts.” Over the years, Congress passed additional laws giving the agency greater authority to police anticompetitive practices. In 1938, Congress passed a broad prohibition against “unfair and deceptive acts or practices.” Since then, the Commission also has been directed to administer a wide variety of other consumer protection laws, including the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the Pay-Per-Call Rule and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. In 1975, Congress gave the FTC the authority to adopt industry-wide trade regulation rules. The FTC’s work is performed by the Bureaus of Consumer Protection, Competition and Economics. That work is aided by the Office of General Counsel and seven regional offices.

The FTC ensures that consumers, consumer reporting agencies, and lenders are treated in a fair and equitable manner. You can learn more about the FTC here by visiting their website.

The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) promotes the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of information in the files of consumer reporting agencies. There are many types of consumer reporting agencies, including credit bureaus that gather and sell information about your credit-worthiness to creditors, employers, landlords and other businesses. The FCRA gives consumers specific rights as summarized below; you may have additional rights under state law:

• You must be told if information in your file has been used against you.
• You can find out what is in your file.
• You have a right to know your credit score.
• You can dispute inaccurate information with the consumer reporting agency.
• Inaccurate information must be corrected or deleted.
• Outdated negative information may not be reported.
• Access to your file is limited.
• Identity theft victims and active-duty military personnel have additional rights.

For more information, visit the Federal Trade Commission website or view an updated copy of the act here.

Yes, we do offer limited support and advice about how to use our web site. If you are having technical issues with our web site, you may email our support team at customersupport@idguards.net Or call us at 1-800-452-2541, Mon.-Fri., 8a.m.-11p.m. (EST), Sat., 9a.m.-6p.m. (EST).

By calling 1-800-452-2541, one of our Member Services Associates can help you make the most of your ID Guards service, its web site, and its features.

In addition, Member Services can help you:

• Navigate the web site to help you confirm suspicious activity
• Start the Credit Dispute Process
• File Identity Theft Insurance Claims
• Report Lost and Stolen Credit Cards

You can also ask to speak with a credit education specialist, Web support expert or someone from ITAC, the Identity Theft Assistance Center.

ID Guards is a premier provider of identity theft and privacy protection services. Learn more here.

ID Guards is different from its competitors because of our level of commitment to you and your privacy. We monitor your financial accounts, personal information, personal data, and credit reports and notify you in a method that you have requested at the first sign of a problem.

Unlike our competitors, your privacy doesn't become more important based on how much money you're paying to us or how long you've been a member. From the first day you sign up for a free trial - you are covered by the same level of protection as other long-standing customers.

ID Guards' Complete Protection protects your identity thoroughly no matter where you are. Whether you are shopping online, traveling overseas, or walking down the street, you will be completely covered.

Enrolling in ID Guards helps to guarantee that your identity and privacy will always be completely guarded. As such, we cannot allow other people - even family members - to view your personal and account information.

If your family members wish to be covered, they must each enroll individually to receive the same personalized protection from ID Guards.

As in all things, you are responsible for the primary protection of your child's identity. If you have a child under the age of 18, we uge you to visit our page on Protecting Your Child's Identity to learn about what you can do to protect your children.

Every person is different and every individual faces a different level of risk from identity theft. As such, ID Guards works with you to determine your individual level of risk and the ideal level of protection and help you need to protect yourself from identity thieves.

As your level of risk changes, or as other aspects of your life changes, ID Guards will work with you to ensure that you have the right level of protection to suit your needs.

A credit report helps bring your personal and financial information and history into perspective. Creditors, lenders, employers and others use your credit report to try to gain an understanding of your life, level of responsibility, and overall creditworthiness by the information contained within your credit report.

Reviewing your credit report and becoming familiar with the information contained therein will give you a better understanding of the decisions that creditors, lenders and employers are making about you. Knowing what your credit report says ahead of time will also afford you the time to amend, fix, or correct any inaccuracies or problems that might have appeared before applying for a new job or new line of credit - raising your chances of being approved.

There are three major credit reporting agencies - Equifax®, Experian®, and TransUnion® - that maintain your credit reports and translate those reports into your credit score. Whenever you apply for a new loan, a new job, or other line of credit, businesses request the information stored at these credit bureaus so that they may use that information to make decisions about you.

The information stored in your credit reports is based on what banks, apartment buildings, retail stores, and other businesses have reported to the credit bureaus about you.

Theoretically, each of the three major credit bureaus should have the same information about you. However, most times the information that they have about you is very different. The differences are most often caused because financial institutions, banks, and other companies with whom you do business only report your information to one bureau rather than all three.

Because of this, your credit score may be very different at one credit bureau than it is at another credit bureau. Because you don't know which credit bureau a company uses when running a credit check to make a decision about you, it's important to monitor and review your credit report from each of the three credit bureaus to ensure they are all accurate.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act declares that any lender through which you have applied for a loan or line of credit can view your credit report. However, there are many other people who can gain access to your credit report simply by supplying the credit bureau with just cause:

• Landlords
• Utility companies
• Phone companies
• Hospitals, clinics, and health care providers
• Insurance companies
• Criminal investigators, lawyers, and courts

As soon as you find an inaccuracy or discrepancy on your credit report, you should notify the credit bureau and begin the disputing process immediately. Although mistakes can happen, the longer you wait to report the inaccuracy, the longer it may take to correct or remove it if it has a negative impact on your credit score.

Identity theft happens when someone else gains your personal information (such as a Social Security number, Driver's License number, or even your full name) and uses that information for their own personal gains.

They may use this information to open a new credit account, apply for a new job, or make major purchases. Depending on the criminal's methods of stealing your information, it can take weeks, months, or years to spot the theft and even longer to clear your name.

Sadly, identity theft is a growing crime; and it's the rate at which this crime is increasing that has spawned a whole new industry of credit monitoring and identity theft risk management businesses to help combat and stop these crimes from hurting consumers and businesses.

There are several methods that identity thieves use to steal someone's identity, including:

• Stealing records from employers and businesses
• Stealing records from school
• Dumpster Diving - in which they rifle through a person's trash
• Installing Spyware, malware, or keylogging viruses on a victim's computer
• Going through a person's mailbox or having their mail redirected to another address

Law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal levels are working tirelessly to fight against identity theft; and ID Guards is working along with them to research and develop new and innovative methods of stopping identity thieves in their tracks.

The first step to protecting yourself is to protect your personal information - any and all data and information that can be used to identify yo. Be sure that you don't give your personal information to anyone who does not need it to perform a specific job for you, including:

• Your name
• Your Social Security number
• Your Driver's License number
• Your bank account, credit card, and other financial account information
• Any other number that is given to you as a means of identifying you individually

Sometimes, you have to give your personal information out. Setting up direct deposit payment methods at your job requires several pieces of personal information; as does filing taxes, opening a bank account, or even applying to rent an apartment. Although businesses are required to protect the personal information of their customers, monitoring your personal and financial account information will help protect your information even when those businesses are unable to:

• Regularly monitor your Credit Reports to find if any accounts have been opened in your name without your authorization
• Closely review your bank statements and credit card statements and verify that all charges made are accurate and authorized by you
• Whenever possible, request for your statements to be sent to you online rather than through your mail
• If you notice that you have not received any bills or account statements through your normal method of delivery, call the business directly to inquire about it
• When entering your information online, make sure you are connected on a secure connection and using the most updated version of your Web browser

Chances are, you'll also need some help monitoring, checking, and reviewing your personal information for inaccuracies and working to correct any inaccuracies that you might find. Help is available in several different places:

• Visit the Federal Trade Commission website and review the laws protecting your rights as a consumer and get advice about what to do if you believe you were a victim of identity theft
• Contact any of the three major credit bureaus for further clarification of your rights, how they apply to you, and to receive a free copy of your credit report.
• Enroll in a credit monitoring or identity theft risk management service to help monitor your credit and personal information. ID Guards offers both credit monitoring and identity theft risk management services.

There are a few signs that you can look for that might indicate possible identity theft:

• Failing to receive bills or other mail on time, or at all. This may signal that an identity thief has submitted a change of address to divert your mail.
• Being served court papers or arrest warrants for actions you did not commit.
• Receiving credit cards for which you did not apply.
• Being denied credit, a job, or a rental agreement for an apartment for no apparent reason.
• Receiving calls or letters from debt collectors or businesses about merchandise or services you did not buy.

Any of these signs could occur simply because of human error - a typo when entering someone else's data into a computer or misspelling a name. However, you should check into each of these occurrences to make sure that a simple error caused these mistakes. Always call a business or institution directly to clear up any potential problems - do not give out your personal information over the phone to anyone who claims to be from a business unless you initiated the call and can verify you are speaking to that business.

First, remember that you are not alone. Help is available from several services and companies that will work hard to make sure that the identity thief does not get away with his or her crime and that you're able to recover your good name in as little time as possible.

As a first step, be sure to report the theft to your local police department, the credit reporting agencies, the Federal Trade Commission, as well as the individual bank or institution that the theft took place at.

To find contact information, web sites, and sample letters you can use, visit and read through our Consumer Tools and Resources section of this site.

Make sure that you keep copies of all correspondences with each of these agencies and keep records of everyone that you've spoken to throughout this process.

Make sure that you follow up with each of these agencies and that they have everything they need from you to find the thief and minimize the damage that can be done to your identity and credit.

Phishing is a method through which identity thieves can steal your personal information by sending you an email that appears to be from a legitimate business. Often, these emails appear to be from financial institutions such as online payment systems (e-gold, PayPal, etc.) or banks that offer online services and claim that there is a problem with your account the requires your immediate attention. Once you click on the provided link, you're asked to provide your personal information by logging into their website in order to clear up the problem with your account.

The problem with phishing emails is that the people who send them out actually spend time on them to make them look legitimate. They often include graphics and logos that are either created to look like those of the real company or are stolen from the real company. The link URLs included in the email, as well as the sent-from email address included in the email often look legitimate as well.

Most businesses have caught on to identity thieves using their online services to try to steal personal information from people; and they have begun to fight back by publishing articles on their web sites that, if followed, will help their customers identify a phishing email that claims to be from them. Although the advice varies from company to company, many of them follow these same basic guidelines:

• No legitimate business will ever send an email that specifically requests your personal information, such as your password or username.
• Most businesses have a particular email address and browser address that they use for verification purposes and do not, under any circumstances, use a different email address to send notifications or have a different browser address.

If in doubt, be very cautious when reading or replying to emails that:

• Ask you to enter any personal information (such as your account password, bank account number, PIN, credit card number, or Social Security number).
• Address you as anything other than your full name.
• Is unable to confirm their legitimacy by providing you with your information.
• Use scare tactics, such as telling you that your account is going to be closed or that you have been a victim of fraud, to try to coerce you into following their links.

A lot of businesses have departments that investigate phishing emails claiming to be them. If you believe you have received a phishing email, you can visit the company's website by typing in the Web address into a new browser window and following their instructions for reporting phishing emails made in their name. Often, they will report back to you confirming your suspicions that the email was a fraud and use the information gained from you to further protect their customers (sometimes by posting a copy of the fake email or a page warning about the existence of the fake email).

If you cannot find instructions about how to report a suspected phishing email directly to the business, you can forward the email either or both of the following email addresses to report it:

• spam@uce.gov (maintained by the Federal Trade Commission)
• reportphishing@antiphishing.org (maintained by the Anti-Phishing Working Group)

Public records are available to anyone making the request to see them. Usually there is a fee charged for viewing public records. Public records include tax liens, lawsuit information, criminal record, or court decisions. By law, these records must be kept public and made available to anyone who contacts the appropriate jurisdiction and formally requests them through the proper channels.

Just as with anything else in life, early detection of identity theft is your first, best defense against becoming a victim of this crime. By regularly monitoring your public information, you will know the very moment that your information has possibly been compromised by an identity thief so you can begin working on stopping any damage he or she could cause before having to suffer any of the negative affects of identity theft.

If you're already monitoring your credit reports for signs of identity theft - then good for you. Monitoring your credit reports is a very important step to spotting and stopping identity theft.

Unfortunately, the damage of identity theft has already been done by the time it reaches your credit report or affects your credit scores. Additionally, if you do spot an inaccuracy on your credit report, the theft of your information has already happened and your personal data is already in the hands of a thief - who can use it again and again. Finding a problem on your credit report is often the last sign that identity theft has occurred; to be better protected, you must be able to spot the signs of identity theft before they impact your credit reports.